A good analysis of how Americans’ views on policing and race today are different than they have ever been before.  As Galston says, “it’s not 1968 anymore.”  

I get this, and I’m not judging.

Newt Gingrich, the Patient Zero of our politically toxic culture (on the right).  The left has not (yet) been so virulently infected.

And following on that:

Political scientists have observed a growing gap in the characters of the two parties. The Democrats look more like a traditional coalitional party, promoting talent through its ranks and assembling support from its constellation of interest and identity groups. Republicans look more like an insurgent movement (as our Brookings colleague Thomas E. Mann and the American Enterprise Institute’s Norman J. Ornstein argue), or an ideological movement (per Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins), or elements of both. The data we present—typical of a variety of indicia we looked at—support their case. Among Republicans, both the supply of insurgent candidates and the demand for them is high and growing....

...the story all these data seem to tell is that a source of today’s polarization is the Republican Party’s base. Recent research by Ray La Raja and Zachary Albert likewise suggests that the Republican base is less willing to play ball with its party establishment than is the Democratic base.

All of which suggests that the Republican Party is growing more unruly and disruptive—harder to govern, and harder to govern with.

Michael Banner is one of my favorite British moral theologians, and in this brief piece he suggests something of why:

The question for those in the Church is this: How well, and how effectively, have we spoken of class and race? Liberation Theology brought class and structural injustice to scholarly attention. And, somewhat ironically, it was in part the neglect of the issue of race in the Liberationist tradition that spurred the development of a black theology of liberation, in the work of James Cone and others, which in turn led to the more general flowering of African-American theology.

But when we ask about how well the Church has spoken of this or that, we surely should be asking not only about what has been said by theologians to theologians about theologians, but about what is spoken of in sermons, prayers, school assemblies and parish newsletters. Here we still seem to shy away from talking about race and class. 

I was struck teaching in Cambridge earlier this year, when race came up for discussion, how uncomfortable and inarticulate students were. They knew that no one should be a racist, but were hesitant and unsure about the fact that racism as a doctrine is built on what is, scientifically speaking, an entirely bogus concept.

The Church should be having a serious and accessible conversation about race and class. Many doctorates will be written about Covid-19 and the ethical dilemmas it posed. But until we all learn to speak and think carefully and critically about race and class, we will be continuing to ignore the two decisive contours of the social landscape that the pandemic has so strikingly illuminated.

Turns out that watching Fox News is hazardous to your health, and the health of those you come in contact with—kind of like cigarette smoking:  “infection and mortality rates are higher in places where one pundit who initially downplayed the severity of the pandemic — Fox News’ Sean Hannity — reaches the largest audiences.”

An extended review of Jürgen Habermas’s recent—still only in German—history of philosophy, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie.  Emphasizes the interesting place religion and religious belief plays, not only historically but also in the present moment, for Habermas—a development over the past several decades that has disturbed some of his most ardent followers.  Our reviewer doesn’t quite know what to do with it either, so he sort of mentions it but doesn’t develop it.  The final summary is a bit unwittingly cold, but also nice: 

This Too a History of Philosophy is a landmark achievement. The text caps a generative intellectual career, clarifying how Habermas understands the historical and conceptual foundations of his lifelong project. Most significantly, the work will inspire the next cohort of critical theorists to confront anew the problem of philosophy’s historical ground. 

Heidegger, Carnap, and the place of wonder, astonishment, and bemusement, in philosophy.  A pretty good, and highly charitable, reading of Heidegger, and I think a similarly decent reading of Carnap.  

Interesting obit of an even-more interesting man: “Rap was something that any idiot had to know was at some point going to be big.”  Maybe so, but Robert Ford Jr. was one of the guys who persevered through rejection after rejection, and made it happen—and in the process changed popular music, culture, and society in ways that are still being felt.  Amazing to think of the impact.  RIP, Mr. Ford.   

Clap your hands, everybody.  And then wash them.